5 Steps to Build an Effective Call to Action

A "call to action" is not to be confused with a "call for action" as we see one of our PPC experts, Dave Kunz, doing here.

When building a website for your business one of the most important things, right up there with avoiding the awful Comic Sans font, is having an effective call to action on the page.  This will provide focus to your site, measure your site’s success, and give direction to your users.  So how do you do it? We’ll show you!

• Urgent!: Creating a sense of urgency is the first step. You need to let the visitor know they need to act now.  A great way to create urgency is offer discounts, entry into a competition, or a free gift to complete the call to action.

• Create a Need: You want to identify and state a problem then present your product as the solution to the problem.  Let your visitors know the benefits of responding and what they’ll get out of completing the call to action.

• Keep It Focused: There have been several studies done in supermarkets that have shown if a customer is presented with too many options, they’re less likely to make a purchase.  The same can be said with your call to action. By limiting the options you reduce the amount of mental effort, and you will have effectively guided the user.

• Position: The point of a call to action on your page is to be right in front of the customer’s view, but not so much that it’s obnoxious.  The general rule is to keep it above the fold and centrally located. Also, make sure it’s bold and stands out above the surroundings. The more white space surrounding the call to action, the more effective it will be.

• Every Page: Last, you don’t want to limit the call to action to just the homepage.  Every page of the site should contain some form of call to action. Dependent upon the content of the page, these could be slightly different from each other or have completely different offers and call to actions.  This can be tricky and time consuming. Good thing your web development expert Oozlers are here to help with this!

by Kody Probst